Photo courtesy Mel's Burger Bar

Morningside has food niches vacated and sort-of filled every few years. AmCaf, beloved steak sandwich locale in the early aughts, became a fancy tapas bar that no one you know eats at. The fabled West End became mediocre Havana Central, a shadow of its former Kerouac-hosting, drunk-makeout-and-beer-pong-haven self. You could get full and drunk for less than $20, and sometimes much less, and that’s all we really ask for (until Mom and Dad visit– then it’s beet bowls for everyone!)

Bwog ate dinner at Mel’s Burger Bar last night, and we’re delighted to report that you can indeed get full from good food and drunk on good beer for not very much money.

Mel’s looks great. The floors are black-and-white marbled, there’s lots of wood paneling, hanging lamps, red booths, exposed brick, huge chalkboards with beer, food and dessert menus, and six flat-screen TVs showing the Yankee game. The hostess and server were friendly, and the bathrooms spacious and unisex– ooh la! There are 140 seats, with 18 chairs on an outdoor patio.

Bwog and our dining companion sampled two of Mel’s punches ($8-9): the Hook, which was a not-too-sweet alcoholic orange juice, and the Haymaker, which was Grey Goose, Bacardi, and some other stuff that got us properly tipsy. There’s also a promising-looking “unusual lemonade” with homemade lemonade, Jim Beam, and mint for $8, and a slew of other mixed drinks that aren’t as embarassing to order as a vodka cranberry.

There are 18 beers on tap ($4-8), 5 cans from PBR ($4) to 21st Amendment Back in Black ($8), and 10 bottles ($5-10). The Southampton White Beer is delicious. The fancy drinks are expensive-ish but strong, the regular beers are roughly 1020-priced. A good way to get a lot of beer: order a 32 oz. or 64 oz. (!) growler to go, from $7-30. There are also stacks of burgers and wings to go.

After the jump, we eat!

Photo via Wikipedia. This bad boy is expected to go once the EC Townhouses run out.

Don’t be late–check your appointment time!

The Core, topical? Leymah Gbowee champions the positively Lysistrata-esque sex strike and more to fight for justice and women’s rights in the Congo and beyond. (The Daily Beast)

New York is now the eighth-most bike-friendly city in the country. Not so, cry the Williamsburg Hasids! (New York Post)

Today in “Things You Didn’t Know About Yourself”: university-educated women drink more than their non-college peers. (Gothamist)

Would you like a side of weed with your meal? (The New York Times)

Haakon’s Hall v. Yelp: death match! (Spec)

The shadowy group only known as “Senior Underground” has sent Bwog a message (by carrier pigeon, of course) that there will be a senior class gathering tonight at the West End to celebrate “our last night at Columbia.” Join your friends, and try not to send any texts you’ll regret. 

Image courtesy of Facebook

Thespian tracker Liz Naiden sends Bwog this dispatch from the spring showing of LateNite Theater, playing tonight and tomorrow at 11 p.m.

As the LateNite crowd stumbled in they may or may not have had time to engage in thoughtful conversation with the giant computer screen projected onto the back wall of Lerner’s Black Box theater.

If they got through their programs at a near sober rate, they probably spent at least 10 minutes watching the “man behind the curtain” typing inside jokes for people in the audience, insulting his own taste in music, and displaying his private AIM conversations.

It only got more absurd from there. Read more…

As reported last night, the major story out of Monday night’s ESC meeting was the potential replacement of 40s on 40 with a BBQ (albiet one with alcohol). But alcohol was not the only topic of the meeting, the last before ESC begins its annual constitutional review.

The 2009 class council announced that the last SEAS fireside chat was canceled because not enough people registered for the lottery. The dean’s office is working with the council to make the chats more appealing: one suggestion (no doubt taken from months of reading Bwog) is to add free food to the equation by holding the events at local restaurants, and lowering the number of attendees to make the event more intimate.  

Happy news for 3-2 students, however: the council is investigating adding printing in Carlton Arms (the dorm for 4th year 3-2 students), or giving students access to nearby dorms to print there. As of now, students residing in Carlton Arms, located at 108th and Riverside, are required to come onto campus to print. Read more…

Late-breaking news out of Satow tonight, as SEAS ’09 president Kim Manis announced at the ESC weekly meeting that 40s on 40 could be replaced with a senior barbeque.

Details will not be finalized until another meeting between adminstrators and students tomorrow night, but Manis reported that “although details are still being worked out, alcohol would still be provided.”

CC ’09 President Mark Johnson, who declined to go into specifics at last night’s CCSC meeting, told Bwog that “after our final meeting tomorrow evening we should be able to provide reliable and confirmed information on any replacement event.” If things hold, maybe seniors can still shout “hooray, beer!”

- JCD, with reporting by SVZ

Bwog-rover James Downie hunkered down in the Satow Room to follow the latest CCSC meeting:

The meeting began with a vote on cosponsorship requests: while most of the groups received their requested amounts, the Vagina Monologues did not get money for dildos for the audience (or maybe “dildoes for the audience”–Bwog and Demetri Martin aren’t sure).

CCSC President George Krebs then updated the councils about Flex. The Dining people are looking for more non-restaurant options, with a particular eye towards Duane Reade and Pinkberry. To make this work, though, Krebs said that the two venues have to know students are interested, “so everytime you go in, ask if they have Flex!” As for Westside’s chronologically-based rejection of Flex, no solution is yet available for the slowness of the system, and it looks like the hours will stay in place.

In other dining news, the Business school now accepts Dining Dollars again, because of lost business when it terminated the agreement. Again, the business school had a bad business plan. CC ’10 president A.J. Pascua also complained about the Fairway shuttle, saying that it didn’t stop close enough to Fairway, and that walking the distance in between at night was “scary.”

The councils’ alcohol plans after the jump. Read more…

Class of 2009, you have officially reached the point at which the school will buy you a Bud Light–and all it asks in return is that you please, please hang out with the rest of your class. In Lerner Party Space. With faint music playing on someone’s iPod speakers. 

By mixing you together with moderate amounts of alcohol and an atmospheric disco ball–a ritual known as Lerner Pub, tonight and for many Thursdays hereafter–Columbia hopes to forge you into a unified body that will scream itself hoarse at graduation and fondly remember Alma when those first big checks come rolling in. You will start by realizing how many of those people you don’t know, how many you once knew and decided you didn’t like, how many you knew peripherally but will never really become friends with.

Read more…